A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) (35 page)

Her voice was compelling, faint as it was. When she made to stand up he found himself helping, with everything that Ashurek had said about her like a fresh wound in his mind.

‘Here, have your cloak and give me my pack – and the crossbow,’ she said. She began to walk with stiff, unsteady steps across the dark plain, and didn’t refuse to lean on Estarinel’s arm when he offered it. Her face was still deathlike and her limbs as frail as wax. He could only wonder at her resilience. It was as if despair ran in her veins like an ichor in place of blood.

The cries above them grew louder, rising and falling on the wind like the wails of demented children. Estarinel, shuddering, drew his sword and Medrian armed the crossbow. He looked up but could see nothing, could feel only big, cold flakes of snow settling and melting on his face. He called Ashurek’s name two or three times, but there was no response. They trudged on.

‘Some sort of light ahead – can you see it?’ Medrian said. Along the horizon there was a faint, spectral radiance, like an oncoming storm. Then Estarinel felt the wind turn warm, and in the same moment Medrian gasped, ‘Be ready – they’re coming!’

A sickly mustard glow began to creep along the underside of the clouds towards them. It illuminated the dark Tundra, clearly revealing the figure of Ashurek a few hundred yards away, engaged in frantic battle with a flapping, airborne object. Beyond him gleamed a vague shape resembling an amorphous mass of crystals. As Estarinel and Medrian began to hurry towards him, the snow became discoloured, like flakes of flesh, turning gradually into oily rain. A branch of blood-red lightning spat at the ground near them and the sky seethed lower until it seemed almost to be touching their hands.

Out of it plunged a flying thing.

It was a huge pterosaur with a wingspan of some twelve feet. Its long jaws were gaping to reveal rows of needle-like teeth as it came at them, screaming like a soul in hell. Great claws swung below its belly and its lengthy tail thrashed the air like a barbed whip. It shone with incongruously brilliant colours, black and sapphire-blue and red, and on its head was a crest that resembled a shaft of vermilion bone.

Estarinel swung his sword, but the creature pivoted round the blade with remarkable agility for its size, and lunged at him with snapping jaws. He dodged and struck at again, but it was like fighting nothing. Its dark wings beat around his head, creaking like leather. Their pinions bore vicious, curved claws. Even as he tried to wield his blade, one of these caught on his cloak and the pterosaur was suddenly on him, folding itself around him, chewing at his throat with cold, sharp teeth. It smelled of the carrion things on which it fed.

Revolted, he tried ineffectively to prise it away. He succeeded only in losing hold of his sword. Then he remembered the knife on his belt; shuddering with disgust, he felt for the haft, found it, and began to stab repeatedly at the creature’s gristly belly.

It did not let him go at once. It keened, and that terrible cry beside his ear vibrated through his skull like the screech of metal on metal, and as the note fell at the end, he felt his sanity falling with it, away into a black void. Suddenly he was lying on the turf, with tiny, snow-spangled flowers pressing into his cheek.

The pterosaur was in the air, preparing to attack again. Outlined against the viscid sky, with sanguine lightning dancing around it, the creature looked primeval and demonic. Medrian was facing it with the crossbow in her hands, a fragile and indomitable figure. Estarinel staggered to his feet and stood there swaying, hardly able to lift his sword. He knew that if it called again he would turn and run like a madman. As it plummeted, he saw that it had cornflower-blue eyes in its pinched skull. Medrian–

Something caught it in mid-flight and it turned over and over, a bundle of flapping shadows. Her arrow had found it. It hit the ground and lay there thrashing like a giant, obscene bat. More indignant than wounded, it began to whine plaintively, and above the clouds a hundred more uncanny voices were raised in response.

Estarinel gasped, ‘Medrian – more will come–’ but she was already running, and he caught her hand and ran with her. The clouds ballooned like a skin swollen with abscesses, while lightning chased them like the giggling of demons. The Worm-sent rain dissolved the snow, leaving the tundra blackened and slippery underfoot.

Ahead they saw the albescent shape that they had glimpsed just before the attack. Then it had appeared small and distant. Now they were drawing nearer they saw that it was huge, like a phantom city swathed in layers of crystalline gauze.

The pterosaurs were moving within the discoloured nimbus, making the sky boil. Sometimes a clawed wing-tip would break through, sending wreathes of brownish vapour into the atmosphere. It seemed to Estarinel that they were being driven, yet again, like cattle.

Suddenly Ashurek appeared, running straight into them. There was blood trickling down his face, but he had evidently fended off his own attacker.

‘Turn back!’ he shouted, pointing at the spectral mass. ‘Whatever that is, we are being herded towards it. We can’t let that happen again at any cost.’

‘I don’t think we have much choice,’ Medrian said faintly, just as the clouds exploded. Vapour swirled about them and the air was suddenly thick with claws and wings and teeth. The pterosaurs were all round them, gleaming blue and red and black – bejewelled creatures with funereal wings, reeking of carrion.

They ran. It seemed that the predators were indifferent to the direction their prey took; their sole purpose was to kill them. The diamond-bright mirage hung ahead of the three, and now they perceived that it was drifting towards them. Or rather, it appeared to be stationary while the tundra itself rolled slowly in its direction. Crisscross patterns of transient light rippled to and fro on its glittering surface; it resembled nothing more than a many-layered, bespangled cobweb. The three ran towards it, because they had no other hope.

The pterosaurs swooped and danced in the air, shrieking their fiendish intent. Medrian noted, as she had surmised, that they were not interested in her. She managed to retard two or three with well-placed arrows, while Estarinel and Ashurek tried to fend them off with their swords. Their efforts were as frantic, tiring and ineffective as a man swiping at a huge swarm of bees. The creatures swirled out of harm’s way, only to close in again.

Estarinel was panting, his throat raw with exertion. Blood ran into his eyes from wounds where claws and tails had caught his head. The atmosphere rustled with darkness, reverberated with metallic, primordial cries that issued from a desolate dimension where sluggish rivers crept between bald grey hills, and pterosaurs flew in silhouette against a greenish-black sky. A cold, cynical, deadly evil was enfolding them, effortlessly ending the Quest.

But now there was a white haze shimmering across their vision as the moving apparition reached them. They stumbled headlong into it, gasping for breath.

They found themselves within a pale fog that was sparkling with motes and strands of light. The pterosaurs seemed reluctant to follow. Most of them wheeled away from the mist wall, uttering heart-stopping screams.

One, however, dropped onto Ashurek, its wings enfolding him like a grisly cloak. Medrian and Estarinel rushed to wrench it off, but it had its claws into his cloak and its teeth in his throat. Except for its membranous wings it was everywhere as hard as gristle, almost impossible to wound. They wrestled with it while flapped its clawed wings at them and squawked. Estarinel seized it by the long, blood-red crest on its head and sawed desperately at its throat to no effect.

‘Cut the crest itself,’ Ashurek choked. Estarinel did so. To his surprise, the knife sliced through it as through meat, and the pterosaur’s lifeblood began to pour from the wound, a flood of virulent scarlet such as could never issue from any natural animal.

At last it relaxed its jaws, and they were able to drag it off and throw it onto the Tundra.

Ashurek coughed and gasped, pressing a hand over the wound in his neck. Blood oozed between his fingers. Estarinel expressed concern, but Ashurek shook his head dismissively, saying, ‘My thanks, but it only nipped the flesh. I wonder where the Serpent has delivered us to this time?’

They moved forward through the shining mist, which thinned and dispersed around them like cobwebs blown away on a breeze. They found themselves standing in a strange city.

All around them were towers of glass: ruby, purple, amber, green and azure, shining with a rich transparent light of their own. The street on which they stood was paved with slabs of clear beryl. The Serpent-sent storm did not penetrate here; the gauzy light seemed to form a protective dome. They halted and looked around them.

Their recent exertion had taken its inevitable toll of Medrian and she sank into a sitting position at the base of a heliotrope tower, her head in her hands. Estarinel knelt beside her, offering wine. She took a mouthful and passed the leather flask to Ashurek, who was regarding her as sympathetically as a demon.

‘Dizzy. It’s nothing,’ she murmured.

#

Physically, she felt numb; she was mortally ill, exhausted, but with the Worm’s will vivifying her, she felt she could walk or fight forever if she had to, like an automaton, sometimes falling but always getting up again, like some awful creature of M’gulfn’s that refused to die. Mentally, she felt that just one strand of herself remained, and that was certain very soon to break and recoil into the void.

She had not forgotten her pressing need to talk to Ashurek. She knew that she must do it while the last thread of herself remained unbroken. She looked up at him, but as she tried to speak, the words died. The Serpent silenced her instantly, painlessly, like someone putting their foot on the tail of a mouse while it scrabbles, uncomprehending, to run away.
Hush. Be still, my Medrian. Rest, for in a little while you are going to tell me everything.

There was not even any anger or frustration in its tone. Groaning, Medrian dropped her head onto her knees, and her hands fell nerveless to the ground.

It is almost over.

‘Does not this city look familiar to you?’ Ashurek was saying. Estarinel glanced sharply at him, the same thought in his own mind.

‘It looks exactly like the City of Glass,’ he observed.

‘You should have more idea than me,’ the Gorethrian remarked caustically. ‘I seem to remember you saying that when Arlenmia drugged you, you saw it in its true form, without the disguise she had placed over it.’

‘Yes, that’s true. I would swear that this is the City… but that’s impossible. How could Arlenmia have found the power to move it from place to place?’

‘There may be a simpler explanation,’ Ashurek said gravely. ‘We may have been transported back to Belhadra.’

‘Oh, by the gods, no,’ Estarinel whispered, closing his eyes. Weeks of travelling towards the Arctic, only to find themselves back in the middle of Tearn? It was too appalling to contemplate.

‘Straight back to Arlenmia,’ Ashurek continued, his face calmly murderous, ‘who is no doubt very much wiser since the last time we met her. M’gulfn has sprung a perfect trap. Well, my friend, what say you to that?’

Estarinel only shook his head, too shocked to make any kind of comment. It was unthinkable.

‘Greetings!’ came a sudden voice a few yards away. Startled, they all looked up. ‘Ah – oh dear – I seem to have forgotten your names.’

Before them stood a thin old man, only four feet tall and as white and frail as frost. He was clad in a robe that seemed to be made of sparkling white light, and there was a certain humour in his mild face. ‘Goodness, if only you could see how surprised you look!’ he said. ‘You do recognise me, don’t you?’

It was Hranna, the mathematician from the White Plane Hrannekh Ol.

‘What in the name of the Serpent is going on?’ Ashurek demanded.

Hranna looked put out; his hands fluttered like moths. ‘I thought you would be pleased to see me,’ he said, crestfallen. ‘I’m rescuing you again!’

‘You’re what? Where is Arlenmia?’

‘Who is Arlenmia?’ was Hranna’s response, and there followed several seconds of confused silence. The pale old man scratched his bony head while Ashurek glared at him and Estarinel and Medrian looked on in astonishment.

‘Is this place the City of Glass?’ Ashurek asked.

‘Yes, naturally. There is only one, you know,’ Hranna replied.

‘We were imprisoned here some time ago by a powerful enchantress, Arlenmia. She works for the Serpent. I surmise, therefore, that either you are in league with her, or that you are some sort of apparition sent by her to trick us.’

‘Forgive my – my indignation,’ the mathematician exclaimed, ‘but I am not in league with anyone, and I am most certainly not an apparition! I’ll write out the equation that proves it, if I must. It seems that some sort of explanation is necessary.’

‘Yes, it is. However, we would prefer it in words, rather than figures, if it is not too much trouble,’ Ashurek said, folding his arms.

‘Well, now.’ Hranna beckoned and began to lead them slowly between the glass towers. ‘I know of the “enchantress” of whom you speak – it’s just that I’m not very good with names. What has happened is this. The Glass City is a special and delicate mechanism whose purpose is to maintain the Entrance Points to the Planes. It is not a city at all, nor is it really made of glass, of course. Well, after this enchantress ensconced herself here, disguised the place with mirrors, used it for her own ends and goodness knows what else, the Grey Ones decided that they could not risk the City being misused in such a dangerous way again. So after she left–’

‘She is no longer here?’ Estarinel interrupted.

‘No, she is not. After you three escaped the City, she departed also. I don’t know why – we have had so much to do that we cannot even begin theorising upon lesser matters – but suffice it to say that when she left, the Grey Ones decided to safeguard the City of Glass against another such, er – occupation. They purposed that the City should no longer reside in, in–’

‘Belhadra,’ Ashurek prompted.

‘Belhadra, thank you, but that it should be free to shift its location, as in days of old. So they commissioned us, the mathematicians of the White Plane, to make the calculations that would transform the mechanism from a static body to a randomly orbiting one. This we have done, as you see.’ The small man spoke with pride.

‘So we are not in the middle of Tearn?’ Estarinel asked.

‘Goodness, no. More between two dimensions, actually. Or is it five? I’m not sure. Lenarg did much of the work.’

‘Hranna, what has this to do with us?’ Ashurek put in.

‘Oh – forgive my abstraction. The point is this. You have sent our calculations haywire.’ Hranna wagged his head with humorous but grave disapproval.

‘In that case, we beg your forgiveness,’ Ashurek said acidly. ‘What on Earth are you talking about?’

‘Well, when you were stranded on Peradnia – Hrannekh Ol, if you prefer – I think I explained to you how, with our theorems, we could predict and express the Earth’s future in algebraic terms.’

‘Yes, and?’

‘Well, there are always new discoveries to be made. There are random factors within any calculus, but even allowing for a variable number of these, every single one of our extrapolations predicts the same thing: the release of a great amount of energy which would negate not only the – the Serpent, as you call it – but also the Earth and the Planes. We have completed only a few million or so theorems, it’s true, but it all seems rather – ah – disheartening…’

Ashurek and Estarinel looked at each other.

‘Now,’ Hranna continued, waving his thin hands enthusiastically, ‘the only way that this negative prediction can be corrected is by using a tentative theory – first proposed by myself – that you are travelling upon a wrong trajectory.’

‘How can that be?’ Ashurek asked. ‘We are heading for the Arctic. Are you saying that we should be going somewhere else instead?’

‘Er – yes, that is our theory,’ the old man replied vaguely. ‘You see, the random factor in this case may be the mathematics itself. We are somewhat to blame for everything that has happened to you so far, I’m afraid.’

‘What?’ Estarinel exclaimed.

‘Is there any probability of you beginning to make sense in the near future?’ Ashurek enquired thinly.

‘I thought I was doing rather well, considering I barely speak your language. Words are so imprecise, aren’t they? As I was saying, when you were stranded on Hrannekh Ol, you should have remained on the H’tebhmellian ship. It would have taken you straight to the Blue Plane. Unfortunately we did not realise until it was too late, so because of our error, you went all over the place instead. If not for us, you would not have gone to the Glass City, and the enchantress would not have left, and the Grey Ones would not have caused it to be moved, and I would not be here now, rescuing you... fascinating, isn’t it?’ Hranna chuckled. ‘This is what our work is all about!’

‘I knew it must be about something,’ Ashurek muttered.

‘Well, faced with increasing evidence that the theory concerning your wrong trajectory was correct, we of Peradnia concluded that something must be done. Thanks to our work with the Grey Ones, we had access to the Glass City, and the ability to move it wherever we wished, and also a limited control over the Entrance Points. We decided that it was our duty to intercept you and give you this information. It was fairly easy to calculate roughly where you were at any given time. Unfortunately the figures regarding those wretched flying things out there,’ he gesticulated at the gauzy dome around the City, ‘were only computed at the last minute, or I would have made sure that you were intercepted earlier, before you fell into so much danger. My apologies.’

‘You really did rescue us,’ said Estarinel. ‘We must thank you. Those creatures would certainly have killed us.’

‘Were you asked to save us by the Guardians?’ asked Ashurek.

‘Goodness, no. This was our own decision. The Grey Ones throw huge quantities of energy about with quite alarming disregard for the consequences. They should employ us more often, although I’m glad they don’t, since we’d never have time to work on anything else if they did.’

‘Then why do you wish to help us?’

‘Ah, well, we of the White Plane also desire to see this energy you call the Serpent negated – without the predicted annihilation of the Earth, if possible – otherwise the loss of our physics would be a most terrible, appalling waste. Oh, and so would the loss of the Earth, of course.’

‘So, you are primarily concerned with preserving your own wretched discipline?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Hranna admitted with a rueful smile. ‘Although, without the Earth, we’d have nothing to work on anyway, you see.’

‘Well, that is a rare and refreshing admission. At least a selfish motive stands a chance of being an honest one,’ Ashurek observed.

‘I wish only that the help we offer could have been more accurately calculated. Sometimes it seems to me that the more one learns, the less one knows, proportionately speaking.’

‘Might we stay on the subject of this “trajectory”?’

‘Oh – of course, I’m sorry. You are going the wrong way, and I am here to help you correct your course.’ He beamed at them.

‘Well?’ said Ashurek. ‘Go on. Where should we be going?’

‘Ah... that I don’t know,’ Hranna admitted, his smile fading. ‘You see, it’s another random factor. Or the same one. Something is missing, or off-course, or lost – this is what our equations tell us. Or rather, don’t tell us. I thought that you would know where you should be instead, and I could simply deliver you there.’

‘Then you miscalculated,’ Ashurek said sourly. ‘We thought we were going in the right direction. Where could you take us, if we had a choice?’

‘Oh, anywhere. Any point on the Earth’s surface. Or I can send you through to the White Plane, the Black or the Blue Plane.’

‘That is very impressive. But how are we to decide? What think you, Estarinel?’ Ashurek asked. As he spoke, Hranna led them into a courtyard bounded by a square structure that gleamed like yellow topaz. Estarinel realised with a feeling of indescribable eeriness that it was the edifice Arlenmia had used as her house. He looked down and saw, encased in the glassy slabs below his feet, a multitude of strange sea-creatures. They were scaled with delicate, silvery colours and their mouths gaped in eternal, silent screams. He stared at them. He had seen them once before, and had thought they were an hallucination; now that he realised they were real, their terrible symbolism made him dizzy and breathless with dread. There was Arlenmia on one side, promising eternal life in the Serpent’s shadow, and there was Ashurek on the other, promising utter destruction. And in between was all the sad, sweet, fragile life of Earth, uttering a never-ending cry for help that no one could hear.

‘The North Pole,’ Estarinel answered in a low voice. ‘I see no point in going anywhere else. It would save us weeks of travelling and end the whole thing quickly.’

‘But that is still the same trajectory,’ Ashurek pointed out, ‘the one that Hranna says is wrong.’

‘I will take you wherever you wish,’ the old man said. ‘Of course, you are welcome to wait for us to calculate a precise answer, but that may take months.’

‘We do not have months.’

‘Then I can only advise you that some sort of educated guess is in order. Don’t let me hurry you: a hasty decision could be disastrous.’

‘It seems that for once we are not being manipulated,’ said Ashurek slowly, ‘but genuinely helped. I may be wrong, of course. Medrian, you’ve been silent all this time. Have you any advice to give?’

She looked at him, her eyes shadowy caverns in her white, drawn face.

‘You know as well as I what is missing, Ashurek,’ she murmured tonelessly. ‘But I don’t know where to look, either.’

Ashurek found himself staring at her, engulfed by the bleakness of her eyes. Yes, she was M’gulfn’s child, there could be no doubt, but at the same time there was a quality of enigma about her that sometimes – as now – was awe inspiring. It wasn’t that he hated her. It was not even that he feared her; he only feared that she would cause the Quest to fail, whether she meant to or not. It was rather that he felt sympathy for her, and that sympathy welled from somewhere dark and grim, like a scarred mountainside where the wind mourned incessantly. It was the vista of his inmost soul, which he’d been forced to confront in the Dark Regions, the part of him that had driven armies to ravage nations, Alaak among them, and which was now driving him to be the world’s doom. It was Miril who had made him understand that that darkness was evil, the opposite of hope, and whenever he looked at Medrian it was the same as gazing into that void of hopelessness. He did not want to look there. Perhaps his wish to leave her behind was no more than a need to escape the darkness within himself, and as futile. He and Medrian were both starved of hope. They needed Miril.

I will fade, and hide myself in darkness to mourn and wait...

‘We might as well go straight to the Arctic, then,’ Estarinel said. ‘No one seems to have any better suggestions.’

Ashurek turned to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

‘I know what Hranna means. I know where we have gone wrong,’ he said. Estarinel looked at him enquiringly. ‘We need to find Miril. She told me that unless I find her again, the world is doomed... do you see what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ Estarinel said, revelation dawning on him in golden light. ‘She is our only hope that the world might be saved and not destroyed.’

‘Just so. This is why she is called the Hope of the World. Without her, we have none. Hranna, I am more than grateful to you for this. Tell me, do you know anything of Miril?’

‘She may be a part of our calculations,’ said Hranna uncertainly, ‘but “hope” is something that cannot be defined mathematically, therefore I’m afraid... well, I am not at all sure what you are talking about.’

‘How do we go about looking for her, then?’ said Estarinel. ‘She could be anywhere.’

Ashurek fell silent for a while, thinking. Medrian stood a little apart from the others, her head bowed, hugging herself. Looking at her, Estarinel wished more than anything to pull her into his arms and comfort the unfathomable, private pain that she endured continually. The knowledge that to try would only worsen her anguish turned in him like a knife.

‘Darkness,’ Ashurek muttered. ‘She said she would wait in darkness. But she did not mean the Dark Regions. And I am sure she is nowhere on Earth, and certainly not on the White or Blue Planes. I think she is on the Black Plane.’

‘Are you sure?’ Estarinel said, alarmed.

‘No. It is only an intuition, but a very strong one.’

‘What if you are wrong? We could be trapped there. Hranna, have you no more definite advice for us?’

‘Ah, alas, I have not,’ the mathematician said apologetically. ‘If anything, I would advise against Hrunnesh, because I cannot guarantee that you would find an Exit Point. But if you feel that you must go there...’ he shook his head worriedly, ‘well, I suggest that you are very certain indeed before making what sounds a rather rash move.’